This application claims the benefit of Japanese Patent Applications No. 2004-018813 filed Jan. 27, 2004 and No. 2005-001573 filed Jan. 6, 2005, in the Japanese Patent Office, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to service providing methods, service provider apparatuses, information processing methods and apparatuses, and computer-readable storage media, and more particularly to a service providing method and a service provider apparatus for providing services, an information processing method and an information processing apparatus for processing information, and a computer-readable storage medium which stores a program for causing a computer to provide services or to process information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, an image forming apparatus (hereinafter referred to as a composite apparatus) integrally comprising the functions of a printing apparatus (or printer), a copying apparatus, a facsimile apparatus, a scanning apparatus (or scanner) and the like, has been developed. Such a composite apparatus has a display part, a printing part, an image pickup (or imaging) part and the like that are provided within a housing. In addition, the composite apparatus is provided with 4 kinds of application programs (hereinafter simply referred to as applications) respectively corresponding to the printing apparatus, the copying apparatus, the facsimile apparatus and the scanning apparatus. The composite apparatus functions as the printing apparatus, the copying apparatus, the facsimile apparatus and the scanning apparatus by switching the applications.
An example of the conventional composite apparatus is proposed in a Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2002-84383.
However, when a new application is to operate in the conventional composite apparatus, there was a problem in that an exclusive developing environment, testing environment and the like are required in order to develop the new application within the composite apparatus.
In addition, there was a problem in that it is difficult to guarantee the security of the newly developed application.